Individual Investors and Volatility

Individual Investors and Volatility
Thierry Foucault1 , David Sraer2 , and David Thesmar3 ,4
May, 2008
1 HEC, School of Management, Paris and CEPR; Tel: (33) 1 39 67 95 69; E-mail: fou-
cault@hec.fr.
2 University of California, Berkeley, Department of Economics; Tel: (510) 809 7775; E.mail:
sraer@berkeley.edu.
3 HEC School of Management, Paris and CEPR; Tel: (33) 1 39 67 94 12; E-mail: thes-
mar@hec.fr.
4 A previous version of the paper was entitled ”Chaining up noise traders.” We are particularly
grateful to Ulrike Malmendier and Mark Seasholes for their suggestions on a previous version.
We also thank Bruno Biais, Hans Degryse, Paul Ehling, Andras Fulop, Laurence Lescourret,
¨
Steven Ongena, Evren Ors, Christophe Perignon, Richard Priestley, and seminar participants at
BI Norwegian School of Management, ESSEC, Tilburg University, and Toulouse University for
their comments. We are also grateful to EUROFIDAI and Albert Menkveld for providing some
of the data used in this paper and oﬃcials of the Paris Bourse for their guidance regarding the
operations of the French forward equity market. Thierry Foucault and David Thesmar gratefully
acknowledge the support of the HEC Foundation. Thierry Foucault also thanks Paris Europlace
for its support. The usual disclaimer applies.
Abstract
We test the hypothesis that individual investors contribute to the idiosyncratic volatility
of stock returns because they act as noise traders. To this end, we consider a reform that
makes short selling or buying on margin more expensive for retail investors relative to
institutions, for a subset of French stocks. If retail investors are noise traders, theory
implies that the volatility of stocks aﬀected by the reform should decrease relative to other
stocks. This prediction is borne out by the data. Moreover, around the reform, we observe
a signiﬁcant decrease in (i) the magnitude of returns reversals, and (ii) the Amihud ratio
for the stocks aﬀected by the reform relative to other stocks. We show that these ﬁndings
are also consistent with models in which individual investors, acting as noise traders, are
a source of volatility.
Keywords: Idiosyncratic volatility, Retail trading, Noise trading.
1 Introduction
Individual investors are often viewed as noise traders. That is, investors who trade for
reasons other than fundamental information, including mis-perceptions of future returns
or liquidity needs. Recent empirical ﬁndings support this view. For instance, using small-
trade volume as a proxy for retail trading, Barber et al.(2006) and Hvidkjaer (2008) show
that stocks heavily purchased by individuals underperform stocks heavily sold by individ-
uals. Grinblatt and Keloharju (2000) or Frazzini and Lamont (2007) ﬁnd that individual
investors systematically loose money to institutional investors. Derrien (2007) show that
French IPOs in high demand by individuals are more likely to underperform.1
In models such as DeLong et al.(1990), Campbell et al.(1993), Campbell and Kyle
(1993) or LLorente et al.(2002), limited risk bearing capacity prevents sophisticated in-
vestors (e.g., liquidity providers or arbitrageurs) from fully eliminating price pressures due
to noise traders. Thus, shifts in noise traders’ demand for a stock contributes to its return
volatility. According to this logic, retail trading should have a positive eﬀect on volatility
if retail investors are noise traders. This hypothesis provides one possible explanation for
episodes of high idiosyncratic volatility (see Brandt et al.(2005)). Yet, it has received little
attention empirically. One diﬃculty is to control for factors that simultaneously aﬀect a
stock return volatility and retail trading in this stock. In this article, we exploit a “natural
experiment” on the French stock market to overcome this diﬃculty.
Until 2000, the French stock market was a two-tier market. Stocks with high turnover
were traded exclusively on a forward market with monthly settlement, whereas less actively
traded stocks were traded spot. The forward market was suppressed in September 2000 to
align settlement procedures of the Paris Bourse with those used in other equity markets.
For individual investors, speculation in the forward market was much easier than in the
spot market, as they could short stocks listed on the forward market or leverage long
positions in these stocks, at virtually no costs (see Biais et al. (2000)). Therefore, an
unintended consequence of this reform was to make speculation on stocks previously listed
on the forward market more costly to individuals relative to institutions.2 As the reform
applied only to a subset of stocks, it provides us with an opportunity to identify the impact
of retail investors on volatility, while controlling for other unobservable factors that might
aﬀect volatility.
Intuitively, a trading restraint on noise traders lowers their ability to weight on prices
and, thereby, it should reduce return volatility. We formally derive this implication by in-
1
See also, for instance, Barber and Odean (2000) and Barber and Odean (2002).
2
We give a more detailed account of the reform in Section 2.
1
troducing diﬀerential trading restraints in a model of noise trading a la DeLong et al.(1990).
Thus, if retail investors are noise traders, we expect a decline in the volatility of stocks
listed on the French forward market after its suppression. Of course, such a decline in
volatility can only be observed if a signiﬁcant fraction of French individuals participate to
the stock market. As of 1998, 15% (resp. 19%) of French (resp. U.S.) households own
stocks directly (see Guiso et al.(2003)). Hence, compared to the U.S., the level of stock
market participation by individuals is not low in France.
The model yields two auxiliary predictions. First, noise trading is a source of serial
dependence in stock returns. Thus, when noise traders face a more stringent trading
restraint, the autocovariance of returns becomes smaller in absolute value. Second, in
this case, the price impact of noise traders’ net order imbalances (the net change in their
holdings) decreases as well. Indeed, a more stringent trading restraint for noise traders
reduces noise trading risk, and thereby it induces sophisticated investors to counteract
more the price pressures due to noise trading. Accordingly, the impact of trades on prices
should be smaller after the suppression of the forward market for stocks previously listed
on this market.
We test these predictions using four years of data around the reform of the French eq-
uity market. Stocks that trade on the spot market throughout our sample period provides
a useful counter-factual for the evolution of our dependent variables (volatility, autoco-
variance of stock returns etc. . . ) both before and after the reform. Thus, we are able to
causally identify the impact of the reform on volatility (and other variables of interest) by
using a simple “diﬀerences-in-diﬀerences” estimation where these stocks serve as a control
group.
We ﬁrst check that the reform is associated with a drop in retail trading since it is a
premise of our analysis. We use the fraction of small trades as a proxy for retail trading as
is common in the literature (e.g., Barber et al.(2006) and Hvidkjaer (2008)). As expected,
we ﬁnd that the daily fraction of small trades in stocks aﬀected by the reform declines
signiﬁcantly after the reform whereas it does not change for other stocks. Moreover, the
daily fraction of very large trades (which usually are carried out by institutions) enlarges
signiﬁcantly for the stocks aﬀected by the reform. Overall, this shift in the distribution of
trade sizes is consistent with a decline in the ratio of retail to institutional trading for the
stocks aﬀected by the reform.
We then study the eﬀect of the reform on various measures of stock return volatility. We
ﬁnd that the reform of the forward equity market is associated with a statistically signiﬁcant
reduction in the volatility of daily returns for stocks traded on this market relative to
other stocks. This reduction varies from eleven to twenty-six basis points (depending on
2
the estimation method), and represents about 11% to 34% of the standard deviation of
the pre-reform volatility of daily returns.
The auxiliary predictions are also supported by the data. We ﬁnd that stock returns
in our sample tend to reverse themselves. But, the size of these reversals drops for ﬁrms
listed on the forward market after the suppression of this market. Moreover, in line with
the model, trades in stocks listed on the forward market have less impact on prices after
the reform. Indeed, the reform is associated with a signiﬁcant decline in the Amihud ratio
(the ratio of absolute returns to contemporaneous trading volume) for stocks aﬀected by
the reform relative to other stocks.
We perform several robustness checks of these ﬁndings. One problem is that stocks
traded on the spot market have diﬀerent characteristics (market capitalization and turnover)
than stocks listed on the forward market. However, our ﬁndings persist when we use a
sub-sample of control stocks that are more comparable to the stocks listed on the forward
market. Another concern is that the link between the reform and volatility is spurious. To
address this issue, we generate placebo ”reforms” before the actual reform (in 1996 and
1997). In this way, we obtain an empirical distribution of the coeﬃcients measuring its
eﬀect on the various variables of interest, under the null of no eﬀect. The point estimate
for the eﬀect of the actual reform on volatility is much lower than that obtained in the
placebo treatments, which suggests that our ﬁndings are not spurious.
Our paper is most related to Brandt et al.(2005). They show that the rise in idiosyn-
cratic volatility of U.S. stocks documented by Campbell et al.(2001) during the 1962-1997
period reverses itself by 2007. They argue that surges in volatility are explained by episodes
of speculation by retail investors. In support of this hypothesis, they ﬁnd empirically that
idiosyncratic volatility patterns are more pronounced for stocks with higher participation
of retail investors (in particular low price stocks). Our approach oﬀers another way to
study the eﬀect of retail trading on volatility. Our analysis is also related to the growing
literature about the eﬀect of individual investors on price movements (e.g., Lee et al.(2004),
Andrade et al.(2008), Barber et al.(2006), Hvidkjaer (2008), Kaniel et al. (2008)). This
literature however focuses on the dynamic relationships between returns and measures of
individual investors’ signed order imbalances. In contrast, our goal is to establish a causal
link between retail trading and stock returns volatility.
Our study also relates, indirectly, to empirical evaluations of the eﬀect of a securities
transaction tax on volatility. Indeed, advocates of a securities transaction tax often argue
that it would reduce excess volatility by discouraging noise trading. Empirical evidences
supporting this claim are either inconclusive (Roll (1989)) or even suggest that transac-
tion taxes increase volatility (Umlauf (1993) and Jones and Seguin (1997)). A potential
3
explanation for these ﬁndings is that a securities transaction tax restrains trades both by
noise traders and arbitrageurs, as pointed out in Schwert and Seguin (1993). Thus, its
overall impact on volatility is ambiguous, and could even be positive.3 In contrast, the
reform considered in this paper primarily aﬀects individual investors. Thus, if individual
investors are noise traders, this reform potentially constitutes a better test of the idea that
”chaining up” noise traders reduces volatility.
In our model, we assume that noise traders’ demands shift over time because their mis-
perception of future returns (investors’ sentiment) ﬂuctuate. It is worth stressing that our
predictions hold more generally when the demand of one class of investors (”noise traders”)
shifts for non informational reasons such as changes in risk aversion (as in Campbell et
al.(1993)) or in non-tradable endowments (as in Llorente et al.(2002)). In this paper, we
are only interested in the eﬀect of these shifts on volatility, not in the source of these
shifts per se. For policy-making, identifying the origin of noise trading (hedging need vs.
erroneous beliefs) is important but this issue is beyond the scope of our paper.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section we describe the
French forward equity market and its reform in 2000. In Section 3, we develop testable
implications. We present our empirical ﬁndings and various robustness checks in Section
4. Section 5 concludes.
2 The French forward equity market
The French forward equity market dates from the 19th century. Originally, it was an OTC
market, operating in parallel with the oﬃcial market. It became an oﬃcial segment of the
Paris Bourse in 1885. Stocks traded on this segment were also traded on a spot market.
This organization changed in 1983 when the Paris Bourse introduced two distinct segments
e
in its list: (i) “Le March´ au Comptant” with only spot transactions and (ii) “Le March´ e
a R`glement Mensuel” (henceforth RM) with only forward transactions.4 Transactions on
` e
the RM were settled at the end of every month, with a possibility for investors to roll-over
their position from one settlement date to the next (see Solnik (1990)). Stocks listed on
the RM were selected by the Paris Bourse on the basis of their trading volume. They were
typically larger and more active than those listed on the spot market.
3
In fact, theoretical analysis of the eﬀect of a uniform securities transaction tax on volatility (Kupiec
(1996), Song and Zhang (2005)) predict ambiguous eﬀects. Bloomﬁeld, O’Hara and Saar (2007) experi-
mentally observe that a securities transaction tax reduces, roughly equally, trades by informed traders and
noise traders. As a result, they ﬁnd that pricing errors are not aﬀected by a securities transaction tax.
4
Buyers (resp. sellers) for stocks listed on the RM could demand immediate delivery (payment) of the
stock but they had to pay a fee for this service equal to 1% of the value of the transaction.
4
The RM was suppressed on September 25, 2000 and, on this occasion, the settlement
date for spot transactions was also reduced from ﬁve to three days. We refer to this event
as the “reform.” The goal of the reform was to harmonize the settlement procedures of the
French stock market with international practices.
A major diﬀerence between the RM and the spot market was the ease with which
individual investors could leverage their positions on the RM (see Biais et al. (2000)).
Investors could sell a stock listed on the RM without owning the stock at the time of the
transaction or buy stocks on margin. They just had to put a cash deposit equal to 20% of
the value of their transaction on the RM (both for sales and purchases).5 They could also
unwind their positions before the settlement date by entering into a trade in the direction
opposite to their initial transaction. Last, at the settlement date, they could postpone
delivery or acquisition of the stock by rolling over their position to the next settlement.6
These features of the RM were especially attractive for retail investors as it is diﬃcult
for them to short sell stocks listed on the spot market or to buy these stocks on margin.
For instance, Biais et al.(2000) note that (p.397):“The monthly settlement system enables
traders who do not own the stock to engage in sales. Consequently, it enables traders to
avoid short-sales constraints. In contrast, for stocks traded spot, [...] this is costly and
cumbersome in practice [to short sell]. Only large and sophisticated professional investors
can undertake such strategies.”
Brokerage ﬁrms (especially on-line brokers) voiced concerns that the suppression of
the RM would reduce the trading activity of their clients.7 In response, the Paris Bourse
e ee
encouraged brokers to oﬀer a new service, called the “Service de R`glement Diﬀ´r´” (hence-
forth SRD).8 For stocks eligible to this service, investors can submit buy or sell orders with
settlement at the end of the month. Consider for instance a retail investor wishing to short
sell one hundred shares of Alcatel, a French stock eligible to the SRD. This investor must
contact a broker accepting orders with deferred execution. In this case, the broker sells one
hundred shares on the spot market on behalf of the investor and eﬀectively acts as a lender
5
This deposit could also be made in securities. In this case, the value of the deposit had to be equal to
at least 40% of the value the transaction.
6
Practically, to roll over their position, investors had to close their initial position at the settlement
price and then to reopen a new position at this price. Thus, sellers rolling over their position were receiving
or paying at the end of the month the diﬀerence between the price at which they initially established their
position and the settlement price. The treatment of buyers was symmetric.
7
See for instance “Paris Bourse Will Require Web Brokers To Advance Clients Funds for Trading,”
Wall Street Journal, Eastern Edition; 07/24/2000.
8
On October 9, 2000, “La Tribune” (a French ﬁnancial newspaper) writes that “SRD is just a tool
to accustom [domestic] retail investors to the spot market. Institutions, on the other hand, already have
margin accounts, which are more suited to their needs.” See “Le SRD, un outil transitoire pour faire
accepter le comptant”, La Tribune, October 9, 2000.
5
of the stock to the investor. At the end of the month the investor must deliver the stock
to the broker. In a similar way, an investor can purchase one hundred shares of Alcatel
with deferred payment. In this case, the investor’s broker lends the amount required for
the purchase. Stocks eligible for the SRD are chosen by the Paris Bourse. Most stocks
listed on the RM in September 2000 became afterward eligible to the SRD.
Even for stocks eligible to the SRD, the cost of short selling or buying on margin
is signiﬁcantly higher after the reform as brokers charge a fee for this service, and can
set margin levels higher than those prevalent on the RM. Moreover, few brokers initially
decided to oﬀer this service.9 Overall, for individual investors, the SRD is at best an
imperfect substitute to the RM. For instance, on October 6, 2000, the French newspaper
“Les Echos” pointed out that: “If its operations are close to the RM, the SRD is far from
presenting the same advantages for the investor, especially in terms of costs.”10
To sum up, the suppression of the RM makes trading relatively more costly for individ-
uals than for institutions. Thus, this reform provides an interesting opportunity to identify
the eﬀect of retail trading on volatility.
3 Testable predictions
Theories of noise trading imply that shifts in noise traders’ demands are a source of volatil-
ity. Thus, if individual investors are noise traders, the suppression of the RM should reduce
volatility since it hinders noise trading. In this section, we formally derive this prediction
in one speciﬁc model of noise trading, namely DeLong et al.(1990). We also derive ad-
ditional predictions regarding the autocovariance of stock returns and the return-volume
relationship.
In contrast to DeLong et al.(1990), we apply the model to individual stocks since our
empirical analysis focuses on the eﬀect of the reform on individual stocks volatility. Thus,
sophisticated investors in our model are exposed to idiosyncratic risk. Several empirical
papers show that idiosyncratic risk is indeed a limit to arbitrage (e.g., Scruggs (2007),
Baker and Savasoglu (2002), Pontiﬀ (2006)).
In the model, shifts in noise traders’ demands are due to ﬂuctuations in their misper-
ception of future payoﬀs. But the predictions can be obtained with other causes for noise
trading. For instance, we have checked that all the results of this section are unchanged
9
Retail investors trade in small sizes. Thus, provision of this service to retail investors is cumbersome
for brokers since the costs of ﬁnancing loans or borrowing stocks are in part ﬁxed.
10
See “SRD contre RM-quels avantages.” Les Echos, October 6, 2000.
6
if noise traders have correct beliefs but trade to hedge non-tradable endowments, as in
Llorente et al.(2002). In this case, noise traders’ non-tradable endowment (per capita),
adjusted for its correlation with the payoﬀ of the stock, plays the role of parameter ρt
(noise traders’ sentiment) in the model below. Proofs of the results in this section are in
Appendix A.
3.1 Model
Overlapping generations of investors trade two securities, a riskless asset (a “bond”) and
a stock, at dates t = 0, 1, 2.... The riskless asset is in unlimited supply and each dollar
invested in this asset returns (1 + r), with r > 0. The net supply (per capita) of the stock
is normalized to one share. At date t, the stock pays a dividend dt such that
dt = d + β(dt−1 − d) + ξt , (1)
with 0 ≤ β ≤ 1.11 Innovations in dividends (ξ) are i.i.d, normally distributed with mean
2
0 and variance σξ . The ex-dividend stock price at date t is denoted pt . A new generation
of investors arrives at each date. At the next date, this generation consumes the payoﬀ of
its portfolio, and leaves the market. Investors have a mean-variance expected utility with
a risk aversion parameter γ. Thus, each investor k at date t chooses his or her portfolio to
maximize
γ
Et Uk ≡ Et (Wkt+1 ) − V art (Wkt+1 ), (2)
2
where Wkt+1 is the wealth of investor k at date t + 1. That is,
Wkt+1 = (1 + r)nkt + (pt+1 + dt+1 − (1 + r)pt )Xkt − Gk (Xkt ), (3)
where (i) nkt and Xkt are respectively the endowment in the bond and the position in the
stock for investor k, and (ii) Gk (Xkt ) is the cost of taking a position Xkt for investor k
(more on this below). We denote the expectation and the variance of the stock price at
date t + 1, conditional on the information available at date t, by Et (pt+1 ) and V art (pt+1 ),
respectively.
There are two groups of investors, noise traders (N) and sophisticated investors (S),
with relative population weights µ and (1 − µ). Moreover, µ < 1. Sophisticated investors
have rational expectations on the distribution of the resale price of the stock. In contrast,
noise traders arriving at date t expect the mean resale price to be Et (pt+1 ) + ρt . Parameter
11
Campbell, Grossman and Wang (1993), for instance, use a similar speciﬁcation for the dividend process.
In DeLong et al.(1990), the dividend is constant over time.
7
ρt is an index of noise traders’ sentiment. It varies over time according to the following
process
ρt+1 = αρt + εt+1 , (4)
with 0 ≤ α < 1. Innovations in sentiment (ε) are i.i.d, normally distributed with mean 0
2
and variance σξ , and they are independent from innovations in dividends.12
The cost of establishing a position can diﬀer between sophisticated traders and noise
traders. We assume that it is quadratic as in Subrahmanyam (1998) or Dow and Rahi
(2000). Speciﬁcally
2
ck Xkt
Gk (Xkt ) = , (5)
2
with ck = cS for sophisticated investors and ck = cN for noise traders. This speciﬁcation
enables us to analyze in a tractable way the eﬀect of making purchases and sales more
expensive for one group of investors relative to the other. To see this, let
Rt+1 = dt+1 + pt+1 − (1 + r)pt , (6)
be the excess return of the stock over the period [t, t + 1]. Investors’ demand functions at
date t are
Et (Rt+1 )
XtS (pt ) = 2
, (7)
cS + γ(V art (pt+1 ) + σξ )
Et (Rt+1 ) + ρt
XtN (pt ) = 2
. (8)
cN + γ(V art (pt+1 ) + σξ )
Investors buy (resp. sell) the security when they expect a positive (resp. negative) return.
The elasticity of their demand to this expectation decreases with parameter ck . Thus, by
increasing ck , we can study the eﬀect of restraining one category of investors while keeping
the restraint on the other category constant. We refer to ck as the restraint coeﬃcient for
group k.
In the rest of this section, we focus on steady state equilibria in which the conditional
volatility of prices, V art (pt+1 ), is constant.
Proposition 1 For all parameter values, there exists a steady state equilibrium. In a
steady state equilibrium, the stock price at date t is
d θ(µ, cN , cS ) β(dt − d)
pt = − + + λ(µ, cN , cS )ρt , (9)
r r 1+r−β
12
As in DeLong et al.(1990), we assume that all noise traders have the same mis-perception, ρt , of
the future stock price. Results are unchanged if there is an ididosyncratic component in noise traders’
misperception. Dorn, Huberman and Sengmueller (2006) or Barber, Odean and Zhu (2005) document the
existence of a systematic component in individual investors’ orders.
8
where θ(µ, cN , cS ) and λ(µ, cN , cS ) are positive constants deﬁned in the appendix (λ(µ, cN , cS ) >
0 iﬀ µ > 0).
For some parameter values, there are two steady state equilibria with diﬀering values
for variables θ(µ, cN , cS ) and λ(µ, cN , cS ) (see the proof of Proposition 1). But our testable
implications do not depend on the equilibrium we pick among steady state equilibria.
The average stock price, d − θ(µ,cr ,cS ) , is equal to the discounted value of the average
r
N
dividend ( d ) adjusted for risk ( θ(µ,cr ,cS ) ). The stock price ﬂuctuates randomly around
r
N
this average level because (i) the dividend paid in each period contains information about
future dividends when β > 0 (third term in equation (9)), and (ii) noise traders’ sentiment
is a source of price pressures (last term in equation (9)). For instance, when noise traders
are pessimistic (ρt < 0), they decrease their holdings of the stock. The stock price must
then decrease to induce sophisticated investors to increase their holdings of the stock since
the latter are risk averse. In contrast, when noise traders are euphoric (ρt > 0), the stock
price must increase to induce sophisticated investors to decumulate their inventory in the
stock.
3.2 Chaining up noise traders
Now, to obtain our testable predictions, we study the eﬀect of making trading relatively
more expensive for one group of investors. We assume that the stock is listed either in
market F or in market C. In these markets
cF = cF ≤ M in{cC , cC },
N S S N (10)
where cj is the restraint coeﬃcient for group k in market j ∈ {C, F }. In Market F ,
k
trading restraints are identical for both categories of investors. In contrast, in market C,
the trading restraint diﬀers across the two categories of investors. Moreover, all investors
are more restrained in market C than in market F .
Using equation (9), we obtain
Rt+1 = Et (Rt+1 ) + (1 + r)(1 + r − β)−1 ξt + λ(µ, cN , cS )εt+1 , (11)
with
Et (Rt+1 ) = θ(µ, cN , cS ) − λ(µ, cN , cS )(1 + r − α)ρt . (12)
Conditional expected returns are negatively related to noise traders’ sentiment and there-
fore vary over time. To see this point, suppose that, at date t, noise traders are optimistic
(ρt > 0). Thus, at this date, they have a strong demand for the stock, which increases
9
its clearing price relative to its long run mean. Moreover, since shifts in noise traders’
misperceptions are transient (α < 1), investors expect the price pressure exerted by noise
traders to be smaller at date t+1 on average. Overall these two eﬀects reduce the expected
return of the stock relative to its unconditional value, inducing sophisticated investors to
decumulate their holdings of the stock in this case.
Using equations (11) and (12), we obtain the following expression for the unconditional
variance of excess returns:
(1 + r) 2 2 (1 + r − α)2
V ar(Rt+1 ) = ( ) ση + λ(µ, cN , cS )2 ( 2
+ 1)σε . (13)
1+r−β 1 − α2
Fundamental Volatility Excess Volatility
In this expression, we decompose the stock return volatility in two components. The
ﬁrst component (”fundamental volatility”) is the volatility of stock returns due to the
uncertainty on the dividend of the security, and the arrival of public information on future
dividends in each period (the dividend paid in period t provides information on future
dividends). The second component (”excess volatility”) is the contribution of noise trading
to return volatility, and would disappear if µ = 0. It implies that the variability of stock
returns cannot be fully explained by the variability of dividends and public information.
For this reason, we refer to this component as the ”excess volatility” component. Using
this expression for the variance of stock returns, we obtain the following result.
Implication 1 : If µ = 0 or cC = cC , the variance of the stock return is identical in
S N
C C
markets C and F. If µ > 0 and cS < cN then the variance of the stock return is smaller in
market C than in market F. If µ > 0 and cC > cC then the variance of the stock return is
S N
larger in market C than in market F.
When cC < cC , the impact of the increase in the trading restraint is higher for noise
S N
traders, other things equal (see equations (8) and (7)). Thus, price pressures due to noise
trading are smaller in market C, and excess volatility is smaller. Opposite eﬀects are
obtained if sophisticated investors are more restrained, that is cC > cC . Moreover, if
S N
noise traders and sophisticated investors are equally constrained in market C then return
volatility is identical in markets F and C, even though trading restraints are higher in
market C. Thus, as noted by other authors (e.g., Schwert and Seguin (1993)), the net
eﬀect of a trading restraint (e.g., a securities trading tax) on volatility is ambiguous in
presence of noise trading. It reduces volatility if and only if it is tighter for noise traders.
Last, in absence of noise trading (µ = 0), the trading restraint has no eﬀect on volatility.
Actually, in this case, the volatility of stock returns is entirely due to uncertainty on
10
dividends and the arrival of public information on future dividends. These sources of
volatility are independent of changes in trading restraints.
Implication 1 yields our main testable hypothesis. The suppression of the RM is similar
to a switch from market F to market C for a stock initially listed on the RM. Moreover,
if individual investors are noise traders, this stock switches to an environment in which
cC < cC since trading restraints are more stringent for individuals on the spot market. In
S N
this case, the model implies a decline in the return volatility of stocks listed on the RM
after the reform.
The model does not yield a clear-cut prediction for the impact of tighter trading re-
straints on the level of the stock price. Consider the case in which cC < cC and µ ≥ 0. The
S N
return on the stock is less volatile in market C (Implication 1). Thus, other things equal,
investors require a smaller risk premium (θ) to hold the stock. However, noise traders take
smaller positions in equilibrium. Thus, sophisticated investors must bear a larger share of
risk in market C. In equilibrium, this eﬀect increases the risk premium on the stock. The
net eﬀect depends on parameter values. For this reason, we do not empirically investigate
the impact of the suppression of the forward market on the level of prices for stocks listed
on the RM.
Rather, we focus on two other implications of the model. First, consider the serial
covariance of stock returns. Using equation (11), we obtain
Cov(Rt+1 , Rt ) = Cov(Et (Rt+1 ), Et−1 (Rt )) + λ ∗ Cov(Et (Rt+1 ), εt ) (14)
α(1 + r) − 1
= λ(µ, cN , cS )2 (1 + r − α)σ 2 ( ). (15)
1 − α2
To understand equation (15), consider ﬁrst the case in which α = 0. In this case, the
autocovariance of stock returns is negative. For instance, suppose that there is a positive
shock on investor’s sentiment at date t. This shock pushes prices up at this date and
implies that the return from date t − 1 to date t is higher than expected. However, since
investors’ sentiment is not persistent, the return from date t to date t + 1 will be smaller
than during the previous period. Thus, transient variations in investors’ sentiment generate
reversals in stock returns. When α > 0, noise traders’ sentiment decays more slowly over
time. Thus, at short horizons, reversals are smaller and for α large enough (α > 1/(1 + r)),
the autocovariance of stock returns is positive. In all cases, however, noise trading is the
source of autocovariance in stock returns. Thus, a restraint on noise traders should reduce,
in absolute value, this autocovariance. This is our next implication.
Implication 2 If µ = 0 or cC = cC , the autocovariance of the stock return is identical
S N
in markets C and F . If µ > 0 and cC < cC then, in absolute value, the autocovariance
S N
11
of stock returns is smaller in market C than in market F . If µ > 0 and cC > cC then in
S N
absolute value, the autocovariance of stock returns is larger in market C than in market F .
This result yields our second testable hypothesis. Namely, if retail investors are noise
traders, the autocovariance of returns for stocks listed on the RM should decrease after
the reform of this market.13
def def
N S
Let ∆XtN = µ(XtN (pt ) − Xt−1 (pt−1 )) and ∆XtS = (1 − µ)(XtS (pt ) − Xt−1 (pt−1 )) be
the net changes in noise traders’ holdings and sophisticated investors’ holdings from date
t − 1 to date t, respectively. Using Proposition 1, we obtain that in equilibrium:
µ(1 − λ(µ, cN , cS )(1 + r − α))
∆XtN = 2
(ρt − ρt−1 ). (16)
cN + 2γ(V art (pt+1 ) + σξ )
The clearing condition imposes
S
µXtN (pt ) + (1 − µ)XtS (pt ) = 1 = µXtN (pt−1 ) + (1 − µ)Xt−1 (pt−1 ), (17)
which yields
∆XtN = −∆XtS . (18)
If investors’ sentiment increases (resp. decreases) from date t−1 to date t then noise traders
are net buyers (resp. sellers) of the stock at date t (see equation (16)). In this case, as shown
by equation (18), sophisticated investors must be net sellers (resp., net buyers). Thus,
shocks on investors’ sentiment generate price changes to induce sophisticated investors to
increase or decrease their holdings of the stock (depending on whether noise traders are
net sellers or net buyers). In fact, using equations (8) and (9), we can write the change in
price between date t − 1 and date t as
pt+1 − pt = Υ∆XtN + ηt , (19)
with
def
2
(ck + 2γ(V art (pt+1 ) + σξ ))
S
Υ(µ, ck , ck )) =
N S . (20)
(1 − µ)(1 + r − α)
def
and ηt = (1 + r − β)−1 β(dt+2 − dt+1 ). Hence, the model implies a positive relationship
between the change in noise traders’ holdings and the contemporaneous change in price
(equation (19)). Parameter Υ measures the impact of the net trade by noise traders at
date t + 1 on the stock price. Intuitively, the inverse of Υ is a measure of market liquidity
for noise traders: a given order imbalance moves price less when Υ decreases. We refer to
Υ as the price impact coeﬃcient.
13
The model implies that the autocovariance and the variance of stock returns should both decline
after the reform. Thus, its prediction for the autocorrelation of return is ambiguous. We focus on the
autocovariance of returns for this reason.
12
Implication 3 Suppose that cC = cF . If µ = 0 or cC = cC , the price impact coeﬃcient,Υ,
S S S N
is identical in markets C and F . If µ > 0 and cC < cC then the price impact coeﬃcient
S N
is smaller in market C than in market F . If µ > 0 and cC > cC then the price impact
S N
coeﬃcient is larger in market C than in market F .
The intuition for this result is as follows. For instance, if µ > 0 and cC < cC , volatility is
S N
smaller in market C since the restraint coeﬃcient is larger for noise traders. Accordingly,
other things equal, sophisticated investors demand smaller price concessions to absorb
noise traders’ order imbalances since their inventory risk is smaller. A symmetric reasoning
applies when µ > 0 and cC > cC . If individuals are noise traders, the last result implies
S N
that stocks listed on the RM should experience a decrease in the price impact coeﬃcient
after the reform.
Testing this prediction is not straightforward as we do not observe changes in individual
investors’ holdings. Thus, we cannot directly estimate the price impact coeﬃcient, Υ. As
a proxy for Υ, we use the Amihud ratio (see Amihud (2002)), i.e., the ratio of the absolute
return over a given period of time to the contemporaneous volume in dollar. Intuitively,
a larger sensitivity of returns to volume indicates that trades have larger price impacts.
For this reason, the Amihud ratio is often used as a proxy for price impact. Goyenko et
al.(2008) show empirically that this proxy is indeed highly correlated with high frequency
measures of price impacts.
4 Empirical tests
In this section, we test the predictions of the model. We ﬁrst describe the data and our
methodology (Section 4.1). Then, we test our main predictions (Section 4.2). Finally, we
discuss alternative explanations for our empirical ﬁndings and perform additional robust-
ness checks (Section 4.3).
4.1 Data and methodology
4.1.1 Data Description
Our main dataset provides daily variables for each stock listed on the French stock market
from September 1998 to September 2002.14 For each stock, we have: the closing price, the
14
These data are collected by the Paris Bourse. They are made available in a user-friendly format by
EUROFIDAI. For information, see http://www.euroﬁdai.org/.
13
daily return (adjusted for split and/or dividends), the number of outstanding shares, and
the trading volume. Moreover, before the reform, we know whether the stock is listed on
the RM or on the spot market. For some tests, we use another dataset that provides, for
each transaction, the price of the transaction, the size of the transaction and the bid-ask
spread at the time of the transaction.15
We refer to stocks listed on the RM as of September 1, 2000 as the treated stocks (173
stocks) and to the remaining stocks as the control stocks (1,004 stocks). The control group
includes a few stocks that were listed on the RM at the beginning of our sample period
but that switched to the spot market before September 2001. Our results are unchanged
if we do not include these stocks in the control group.
A few stocks in our sample serve as underlying securities for options and, since January
2001, single stock futures. They all belong to the treated group. Arguably, speculators
can use derivatives to avoid trading restraints on the underlying securities. In this case,
it should be more diﬃcult to identify the eﬀect of the reform on the stocks that serve
as underlying of derivatives contracts. For this reason, we do not exclude them from our
sample, but check that the ﬁndings are robust to this decision.
Table 1 reports summary statistics for the key variables in our study.
[Insert Table 1 about here]
We use three measures of volatility: (i) the monthly standard deviation of daily returns,
(ii) the monthly standard deviation of daily stock returns minus the daily market return
and (iii) the monthly standard deviation of the residual of a regression of daily stock
returns on market returns. In each case, we remove returns that are above (resp. below)
the median plus (resp. minus) ﬁve interquartile ranges. The ﬁndings are robust to the
trimming method. Moreover, when a ﬁrm has fewer than twenty nonmissing daily returns
through a given month, the variables of interest (here volatility) are set to missing values in
this month. We use daily observations of returns as in other related papers (e.g., Campbell
et al. (1993), Llorente et al.(2002) or Lee et al.(2004)).
Table 1 shows that the mean values of the three measures of volatility are similar, both
for treated and control stocks. Overall, the volatility of treated stocks is lower than the
volatility of control stocks. For instance, the daily volatility of raw returns is 290 basis
points for control stocks and 250 basis points for treated stocks, on average.
For each stock and in each month, we also compute (i) the autocovariance in daily
15
This dataset, called BDM, is provided by the Paris Bourse and is used in other empirical studies (e.g.,
Bessembinder and Venkataraman (2003)).
14
returns and (ii) the average of the daily ratio of absolute return to trading volume in euros
(the Amihud ratio). Table 1 reports the mean values of these variables across month and
across stocks, separately for treated and control stocks. For both groups, the average auto-
covariance of daily returns is negative. However, returns of treated stocks tend to reverse
themselves less. The Amihud ratio is also lower for treated stocks than for control stocks.
These observations indicate that treated stocks are more liquid than control stocks. In
fact, Table 1 shows that treated stocks have, on average, a higher turnover (daily number
of shares traded/outstanding number of shares) and smaller bid-ask spreads compared to
control stocks.16 Moreover, treated stocks have, on average, a larger market capitaliza-
tion than control stocks. We explain below how we control for these diﬀerences in the
characteristics of our two groups of stocks.
4.1.2 Methodology
As explained in Section 2, it is more costly for individual investors, relative to institutions,
to trade treated stocks after September 25, 2000. In contrast, trading restraints on indi-
vidual investors are identical throughout the sample period for control stocks, since these
stocks trade on the spot market before and after the reform. Thus, we can isolate the eﬀect
of restraining trades by individual investors by considering changes (e.g., in volatility) for
stocks in the treated group, while controlling for market wide movements using stocks in
the control group. Our empirical strategy consists in comparing treated and control stocks
using a “diﬀerences-in-diﬀerences” estimation. Our baseline regression is:
Yit = α + β0 Ti + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit , (21)
where Yit is the outcome of interest (e.g., volatility) for stock i in month t, P OSTt is a
dummy variable equal to one after September 2000, and Ti is equal to one if the ﬁrm
belongs to the treated group.
In this regression, coeﬃcient β0 measures the diﬀerence between the mean values of the
dependent variable for the treated group and the control group before the reform. Thus,
Ti controls for diﬀerences in the characteristics of the two groups that are ﬁxed over time.
Coeﬃcient β1 measures the change in the mean value of the dependent variable before
and after the reform. Hence, P OSTt controls for factors that aﬀect the evolution of the
dependent variable around the reform and which are common to all stocks. The identifying
assumption is that, on average, these factors have the same eﬀect for control and treated
16
For each stock, we compute the bid-ask spread by using the bid and ask price observed for the last
transaction of each month. Table 1 reports the average of this bid-ask spread across stocks and across
month.
15
stocks. Under this assumption, β2 measures the causal eﬀect of the reform on the dependent
variable Yit . Indeed, it is the diﬀerence in the mean value of the dependent variable for
treated stocks before and after the reform after controlling for (i) ﬁxed diﬀerences in the
characteristics of the two groups of stocks and (ii) common factors aﬀecting the evolution
of the dependent variable over time.
In estimating equation (21), we take into account several methodological issues. The
OLS standard deviations of diﬀerences-in-diﬀerences estimates are biased if there is se-
rial correlation in error terms for a given stock. This serial correlation is expected given
the nature of the independent variables in equation (21) (see Bertrand, Duﬂo and Mul-
lainathan (2004)). Thus, for a given stock, we allow for correlations between error terms
εit by “clustering” at the ﬁrm level. Second, the number of observations in each group
of stocks diﬀers before and after the reform because of delistings after September 2000
and, more importantly, because of missing observations for infrequently traded stocks in
some months17 . This possibly creates a selection bias. One way to deal with this problem
is simply to restrict our attention to a sample of stocks with non-missing observations.
Another way is to estimate equation (21) using a stock ﬁxed eﬀect, that is:
Yit = αi + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit , (22)
We ﬁnd that both approaches deliver very similar ﬁndings. Thus, for brevity and to retain
the largest number of observations, we only report the results with the second approach.
Last, our methodology assumes that factors aﬀecting the evolution of the outcome Yit
over time have, on average, the same eﬀect on both groups of stocks. This assumption is
more plausible if these two groups have similar characteristics. In Figure 1, we compare
the distributions of stock market capitalization (left panel) and turnover (right panel) for
each group at the beginning of our sample period. We focus on these characteristics since
they were used by the Paris Bourse to allocate stocks to the RM or to the spot market.
[Insert Figure 1 about here]
The distributions of turnover for the two groups largely overlap. The distributions of
market capitalization are more heterogeneous but they still overlap. For instance, more
than 50% (resp. 36%) of the treated stocks have a market capitalization smaller (resp.
higher) than the market capitalizations in the last (ﬁrst) percentile of the size distribution
17
In particular, because stocks in the control groups are on average less liquid, this attrition is diﬀerent
in the control and in the treatment group: overall, there are 10,903 stocks with missing volatility in the
control group while only 234 stocks with missing volatility in the treated group
16
for control stocks. Overall, Figure 1 shows that there are many stocks in each group that
are comparable in terms of both turnover and size.
To control for diﬀerences in size and trading activity between the two groups of stocks,
we use the methodology proposed by Crump et al. (2006). Namely, using the observations
of September 2000, we run a logistic regression to determine the likelihood that a ﬁrm
belongs to the treated group. Speciﬁcally, we estimate the following logistic regression
(results unreported for brevity):
4 4
Ti = α + βq Sq + γq Vq + ηi , (23)
q=1 q=1
where Ti = 1 if stock i is treated, Sq = 1 if the initial market capitalization of stock i
belongs to the q th quartile in terms of capitalization, and Vq = 1 if the turnover of stock
i belongs to the q th quartile in terms of turnover. As expected, the probability of being
treated increases in both size and turnover. We then use the estimates of this logistic
regression to compute the probability (the “score”) that a stock belongs to the treated
group given its characteristics. We build a subsample of stocks that contains only stocks
with a score between 0.1 and 0.9 and refer to this subsample as the restricted sample: it
is constituted in September 2000 with 71 treated stocks and 124 control stocks.
[Insert Figure 2 about here]
Figure 2 shows the distributions of market capitalization and turnover for treated and
control stocks in the restricted sample. As expected, these distributions are now much
more comparable. Thus, as a robustness check, in all our tests, we estimate equation (22)
for the restricted sample as well.
In the spirit of the “propensity score matching” literature, we also run regressions (21)
and (22) with the full sample, but controlling for P OST × SCOREi , where SCOREi is
the probability that stock i belongs to the treated group as estimated using equation (23).
This alternative approach gives similar results, that we do not report here to save space.
Finally, we also test the robustness of our ﬁndings by using a foreign sample of control
stocks. Namely, we use a sample of thirty-nine Belgian and Dutch blue-chips listed on
the Brussels and the Amsterdam stock exchanges. At the time of our study, there is no
forward equity market on these exchanges. Thus, it is easier to ﬁnd stocks listed on these
markets that are comparable to our treated stocks. On average, the logarithm of market
capitalization for the Belgian and Dutch blue-chips in our sample is 22, with a standard
deviation of 1.6. These ﬁgures are very similar to the corresponding ﬁgures for the group
17
of treated stocks in our study (see Table 1). However, the level of turnover is much higher
for Belgian and Dutch stocks (0.8 against 0.22). The ﬁndings obtained with this control
group are very similar to those we obtain with the French control stocks. Statistical tests
have less power, however, since the control group is smaller. For brevity, we do not report
the ﬁndings obtained with this approach.
4.1.3 The distribution of trade sizes
A premise of our analysis is that the suppression of the RM makes trading more expensive
for retail investors relative to institutional investors. Hence, this suppression should be
associated with a drop in retail trading relative to institutional trading.
We cannot directly check this conjecture because we do not observe individual investors’
trades. Several papers suggest that the fraction of small trades is a good proxy for retail
trading (e.g., Derrien (2005), Barber, Odean and Zhu (2006), and Hvidkjaer (2008)). Insti-
tutions also place small orders to minimize price impact but, in contrast to retail investors,
they also place large orders. Thus, if our conjecture is correct, the suppression of the RM
should coincide with a change in the distribution of trade sizes; namely, a decline in the
frequency of small trades and an increase in the frequency of large trades.
To study this question, we use the time stamped record of all transactions (prices
and quantities) from August 1, 2000 to November 30, 2000. We deﬁne small and large
trades with respect to cutoﬀs that depend on ﬁrm size as in Hvdijkaer (2006). Speciﬁcally,
in each month t, we group stocks into quintiles, q, based on their market capitalization.
Within each quintile, we compute the stock price pq that stands at the 95th percentile. For
quintile q, we deﬁne the cutoﬀ for small trades as 100×pq , and the cutoﬀ for large trades as
150 × pq . Thus, the cutoﬀs vary across quintiles and across months. They increase in ﬁrm
size because larger ﬁrms tend to have higher stock prices. With these cutoﬀs, we classify
90% of all trades as small trades and 6% as large trades (see the second panel of Table 1).
The fractions of small and large trades do not add up to one as trades with intermediate
sizes are not classiﬁed. The conclusions are robust to other deﬁnitions for the cutoﬀs (and
thereby other baseline fractions of large and small trades).
[Insert Figure 3 about here]
We ﬁrst compute the average daily fraction of small and large trades for each group of
stocks, as shown in Figure 3. The top-left panel shows that, as expected, for treated stocks,
there is a marked drop in the fraction of small trades after the reform. In contrast, there
is no apparent change in the fraction of small trades for control stocks (top-right panel).
18
The bottom right panel shows that there is a sharp increase in the fraction of large trades
for treated stocks after the reform. Again, there is no clear change for control stocks.
To quantify the eﬀects in Figure 3, we implement the methodology described in Section
4.1.2: we estimate equations (21) and (22) using as dependent variables (i) the fraction of
small trades (i.e., Yit = STit where STit is the fraction of small trades in day t for stock
i) and (ii) the fraction of large trades (i.e., Yit = LTit where LTit is the fraction of large
trades in day t for stock i).
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Table 2 reports the results. There is a signiﬁcant decline in the fraction of small trades
for treated stocks after the reform and no signiﬁcant change in this fraction for control
stocks. The decline in the fraction of small trades for treated stocks is equal to about 1.4%,
that is 10% of the standard deviation of the fraction of small trades for these stocks. This
ﬁnding is robust to the inclusion of ﬁxed eﬀects and it persists when we use the restricted
sample.
The ﬁndings for the proportion of large trades mirror those obtained for the proportion
of small trades (see columns 4-6 of Table 2). There is a signiﬁcant increase in the fraction
of large trades for treated stocks after the reform relative to the fraction of large trades for
control stocks. This increase is equal to about 1.6%, that is 10% of the standard deviation
of the fraction of large trades for treated stocks.
Overall, for treated stocks, small (resp. large) trades are less (resp. more) frequent
after the reform. This evolution in the distribution of trade sizes of treated stocks after
the reform indicates that there is less retail trading in these stocks after the suppression
of the forward market, as conjectured.
4.2 Empirical ﬁndings
4.2.1 Volatility
Our main testable hypothesis is that the suppression of the RM should decrease the volatil-
ity of stocks listed on this market as it restrains retail trading. As explained in Section
4.1.2, to test this hypothesis, we estimate equations (21) and (22) using volatility as a
dependent variable (i.e. Yit = volatit where volatit is the volatility measure for stock i
in month t). Our testable hypothesis for volatility implies that β2 should be signiﬁcantly
negative.
19
Our ﬁndings are identical for all measures of volatility deﬁned in Table 1. Hence, for
brevity, we just report in Table 3 the results with our second measure of volatility, that is
the standard deviation of the daily stock return minus the daily market return.
[Insert Table 3 about here]
Column 1 of Table 3 reports the estimates of our baseline regression. These estimates
conﬁrm that treated stocks are signiﬁcantly less volatile than control stocks, as observed in
Table 1. Moreover, as implied by the theory, we ﬁnd a signiﬁcant decline in the volatility
of treated stocks after the reform, relative to the volatility of control stocks.
The point estimates for β2 is sensitive to the method that we use to estimate the eﬀect
of the reform. When we do not include stock ﬁxed eﬀects, the drop in the volatility of
treated stocks after the reform is equal to twenty-six basis points (34% of the standard
deviation of the volatility of treated stocks before the reform). When we include stock
ﬁxed eﬀects, the drop in volatility of treated stocks is smaller, and equal to eighteen basis
points. Last, when we estimate equation (22) for the restricted sample (our preferred
speciﬁcation), the drop in volatility for treated stocks is equal to eleven basis points, that
is 11% of the standard deviation of the volatility of treated stocks before the reform. For
all speciﬁcations, the decline in volatility of treated stocks after the reform is statistically
signiﬁcant (at the 1% level).
Overall, in economic terms, the eﬀect of the reform on volatility is moderate, but not
negligible. The model, combined with other empirical evidence, indeed suggests that the
drop in the volatility of daily return cannot be too large to be plausible. To see this point,
recall that the variance of stock returns in the model is the sum of two components: the
fundamental volatility component and the excess volatility component (see equation (13)).
The fundamental volatility component is not aﬀected by noise trading. Thus, restraining
noise traders can reduce the variance of stock returns by an amount at most equal to the
excess volatility component. Using this observation, it is easily shown that the percentage
diﬀerence in the standard deviation of returns between market F and C cannot be larger
than:
1
upper bound=1 − √ , (24)
1+Ω
where Ω is the ratio of the excess volatility component to the fundamental volatility com-
ponent. Roll (1988) provides an estimate of the inverse of this ratio using daily returns
of stocks listed on the NYSE. His ﬁndings suggest a value of Ω equal to about 33% (see
Table IV in Roll (1988), two ﬁrst lines).18 Thus, even though a large fraction of stock
18
Roll (1988) decomposes a stock idiosyncratic volatility in two components: Vx + pVy where Vx is
20
volatility is idiosyncratic (see Roll (1988)), the excess volatility component seems small
compared to the component of volatility due to information arrival (public and private)
on future cash-ﬂows. Empirical ﬁndings in Vuolteenaho (2000), Durnev et al.(2003) and
Shen (2007) point in the same direction. Moreover, the stocks aﬀected by the reform have
relatively large capitalizations. We expect µ to be relatively small in these stocks since
institutional trading is relatively more prevalent in stocks with large capitalization (see
for instance Brandt et al.(2005)). Again, this implies a relatively small value for Ω (see
equation (13)). As shown by equation (24), in these conditions, one expects a moderate
decline in the volatility of the stocks aﬀected by the reform in our empirical analysis. For
instance, if Ω = 33%, the percentage diﬀerence in volatility between markets F and C in
the model is at most 13%.
4.2.2 Returns reversals
Our second prediction is that the autocovariance of stock returns should decrease (in
absolute value) for the treated stocks after the reform. Swings in noise traders’ demands are
a source of serial correlation in returns (see Section 3.2). For this reason, a restraint on noise
traders reduces the size of the autocovariance in stock returns. To test this hypothesis, we
set Yit = autocovit in equations (21) and (22) where autocovit is the autocovariance of daily
returns for stock i in month t. From Table 1, we know that the average autocovariance
of daily returns is negative. Thus, our testable hypothesis implies that β2 should be
signiﬁcantly positive. That is, the size of return reversals for treated stocks is closer to
zero after the reform.
[Insert Table 4 about here]
The results are reported in Table 4. In all speciﬁcations, we ﬁnd that the reform
signiﬁcantly reduces the size of reversals for treated stocks relative to control stocks. The
largest estimate for β2 is obtained when we use the restricted sample. In this case, the
estimate for β2 indicates a drop in the absolute value of the autocovariance of treated stocks
equal to about 0.2 basis points, that is 13% of the standard deviation of this variable before
the reform (see Table 1). Overall, the decrease in reversals for treated stocks, following
the suppression of the forward equity market, is sizeable and consistent with the model.
the component due to noise trading and pVy is the component due to information arrival. Thus, Vx
corresponds to our ”excess volatility” component and pVy to our ”fundamental volatility” component. Roll
(1988) provides estimates of Vx , p, and Vy using daily returns. When he includes all daily observations in
Vy
his sample and adjusts returns using the CAPM, Roll (1988) obtains that Vx = 20.457 and p = 0.14393.
def Vx
It follows that in this case Ω = pVy 33%.
21
4.2.3 Price impact
Our ﬁnal prediction is that the Amihud ratio (the ratio of absolute return to contempora-
neous trading volume) should decline for treated stocks after the suppression of the RM.
In the model, the compensation required by sophisticated investors for absorbing noise
traders’ net order imbalances increases with volatility. Thus, as noise trading risk is re-
duced, this compensation declines and prices should be less sensitive to noise traders’ order
imbalances. As a consequence, it should take more volume to move prices after the reform
(see Section 3.2). To test this hypothesis, we now use the Amihud ratio as the dependent
variable in equations (21) and (22).
[Insert Table 5 about here]
Table 5 report the ﬁndings. When we do not control for stock ﬁxed eﬀects, we ﬁnd
a decline in the Amihud ratio of treated stocks relative to control stocks but the eﬀect is
not signiﬁcant. When we control for stock ﬁxed eﬀects, the decline in the Amihud ratio
of treated stocks is much larger and signiﬁcant. The point estimate for β2 indicates that
the reform is associated with a decline of thirteen basis points for the Amihud ratio of
treated stocks, that is 29% of its standard deviation for treated stock before the reform.
The ﬁnding is even stronger (ﬁfty-seven basis points) and more signiﬁcant when we use
the restricted sample to better control for diﬀerences in sizes and trading activity between
treated and control stocks (see Column 3).
4.3 Robustness
We ﬁnd that the suppression of the French forward equity market is associated with a
signiﬁcant reduction in (i) the return volatility, (ii) the return autocovariance, and (iii) the
Amihud ratio of the stocks aﬀected by the reform. All these eﬀects are consistent with the
view that individual investors acting as noise traders are a source of volatility, as described
in the model. We now discuss alternative explanations for our empirical ﬁndings, and we
discuss further the robustness of our results.
Alternative explanations. Our ﬁndings may stem from a reduction in quoted bid-ask
spreads of treated stocks. Indeed, a smaller bid-ask spread reduces the bid-ask bounce.
Thus, it lowers return volatility and the absolute value of the autocovariance in stock
returns (see Roll (1984)). This reduction of quoted bid-ask spread is not obviously implied
by our model since it does not feature bid-ask quotes.
[Insert Figure 4 about here]
22
Figure 4 depicts the evolution of the diﬀerence between the average bid-ask spreads of
treated and control stocks between January 2000 and June 2001 (along with a four month
moving average). There is no clear trend, neither upward nor downward, in this diﬀerence.
This observation suggests that the reform has no eﬀect on quoted spreads. This conjecture
is conﬁrmed when we estimate equations (21) and (22) with the monthly bid-ask spread
for each stock as dependent variable. In this case, we do not ﬁnd any signiﬁcant eﬀect of
the suppression of the RM on the bid-ask spread of treated stocks. We do not report the
results for brevity. As there is no signiﬁcant change in bid-ask spreads of treated stocks
around the reform, a reduction in bid-ask spreads of these stocks over time cannot be the
source of our empirical ﬁndings.19
Duﬀee (1995) shows that there is a positive relationship, at the ﬁrm level, between
the volatility of stock returns and contemporaneous returns. Moreover, this relationship
largely explains the so called leverage eﬀect (the fact that changes in volatility and lagged
returns are inversely related). Duﬀee (1995)’s ﬁnding suggests another possible explanation
for our results, namely that treated stocks experience a more severe decline in prices after
the suppression of the RM than control stocks. This is indeed a possibility since the reform
considered in this article coincides with a downturn of the French stock market.
[Insert Figure 5 about here]
Figure 5 does not support this explanation, however. It shows the evolution of the mean
market capitalizations of the control and treated stocks over our sample period (normalized
at 100 in September 2000). Stock prices peak in August 2000, but control stocks are more
severely hit by the downturn than treated stocks. As an additional check, we run the
following regression:
Yit = αi + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + β3 Rit + εit , (25)
where Yit is one of the three dependent variables analyzed in Section 4.2 and Rit is the
return for stock i in month t. The other variables are deﬁned as in Section 4.2. Coeﬃcient
β3 controls for variations in stock returns. For all dependent variables, we ﬁnd that our
estimates for β2 are similar, both in terms of magnitude and statistical signiﬁcance, to
those found in Section 4.2 (we do not report these estimates for brevity). Hence, our
ﬁndings do not seem to be explained by diﬀerences in the evolution of prices for control
and treated stocks around the reform.
19
Bid-ask spreads and price impacts are two diﬀerent dimensions of market illiquidity. In fact, Goyenko
et al.(2008) show empirically that the Amihud ratio has a weak relationship with bid-ask spreads. Thus,
it is not surprising that the Amihud ratios and bid-ask spreads for treated stocks do not behave similarly.
23
Additional robustness tests. To check whether our ﬁndings are not spurious, we
estimate equation (22) using each month between January 1996 and December 1997 as
a ”placebo reform” and keeping the original sample of treated and control stocks. In
this way, we obtain twenty-four estimates for coeﬃcient β2 under the null hypothesis that
the reform has no eﬀect (since there was no reform for treated stocks during this sample
period).
[Insert Figure 6 about here]
Figure 6 presents the corresponding empirical distribution of β2 when volatility is the
dependent variable. The estimates of β2 in this case varies from -9 basis points to 8 basis
points. All these estimates are strictly larger than the estimate of β2 for September 2000,
that is at the time of the actual reform. Thus, it is unlikely that the drop in volatility
of treated stocks observed at the time of the suppression of the French forward equity
market in 2000 is obtained just by chance. Results for the autocovariance of returns and
the Amihud ratio are less strong. Using the empirical distributions of β2 in these cases (not
shown for brevity), we would reject the null of no eﬀect of the reform on these variables at
the 10% level only.
Last, we check whether the conclusions of the analysis are aﬀected by the length of the
sample period around the reform (fourty-eight months equally distributed around the re-
form). Speciﬁcally, we consider (i) a thirty-six months sample period and (ii) a twenty-four
months sample period, equally distributed around the reform. We only use the restricted
sample. The results are reported in Table 6.
[Insert Table 6 about here]
Clearly, the results are unchanged when we use a thirty six months sample period.
The estimates of the eﬀect of the reform are in fact very similar to those reported in the
previous section. With a shorter sample period, the sign of the estimates for the impact
of the reform on volatility and the autocovariance of stock returns are unchanged. The
estimates are insigniﬁcant however as our statistical tests loose power due to the reduction
in sample size. Yet, the reduction in the Amihud ratio remains signiﬁcant and has the
same magnitude as that obtained with longer sample periods.
5 Conclusion
In this article, we test the hypothesis that retail trading has a positive impact on the
volatility of individual stocks. Testing this hypothesis is important since, as suggested by
24
Brandt et al.(2005), it could explain episodic surges in idiosyncratic volatility. Moreover, it
has implications for arbitrage activities and various regulatory debates regarding ﬁnancial
markets.
To identify the eﬀect of retail investors on return volatility, we study a reform of the
French equity market that makes retail trading relatively more expensive in some stocks.
Speciﬁcally, a subset of French stocks used to trade exclusively in a forward market. This
forward market is replaced by a spot market in September 2000. This reform made it
more costly for retail investors to short sell or buy on margin stocks that were listed on
the forward market. In fact, we ﬁnd that the fraction of small trades (a proxy for retail
trading) drops signiﬁcantly for the stocks aﬀected by the reform while no such change is
observed for other stocks.
The hypothesis that retail trading has a positive eﬀect on return volatility follows
from the view that individuals are noise traders. Therefore, we use a standard model of
noise trading (DeLong et al.(1990)) to develop predictions regarding the eﬀect of making
speculation more costly for noise traders. The model has three predictions. Namely, (i)
the return volatility, (ii) the autocovariance of stock returns in absolute value, and (iii)
the Amihud ratio should decrease for the stocks aﬀected by the reform in 2000. No such
change should be observed for other stocks and diﬀerent predictions would obtain for the
stocks aﬀected by the reform if individual investors were not noise traders.
We test these predictions using stocks not aﬀected by the reform as control stocks.
Diﬀerences-in-diﬀerences estimates indicate that the reform has indeed signiﬁcantly re-
duced the volatility of the stocks aﬀected by the reform relative to other stocks. Moreover,
for these stocks, the Amihud ratio and the autocovariance of stock returns are also signiﬁ-
cantly smaller after the reform. These ﬁndings persist when we perform various robustness
checks. Overall, the ﬁndings support the hypothesis that individual investors, acting as
noise traders, have a positive eﬀect on return volatility.
Our study focuses on one event and in this sense it adds only one datapoint to the
debate regarding the eﬀect of retail investors on volatility. Moreover, models of limited
participation suggest that stock market then volatility should be reduced as market par-
ticipation enlarges (Allen and Gale (1994)). In this case, the long-term eﬀect of changes
in the level of market participation by retail investors on volatility may be more complex
than that suggested by our empirical analysis. We leave this question for future research.
25
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A Proofs
In this appendix, we denote V art (pt+1 ) by σ 2 (µ, cN , cS ) to stress that parameters {µ, cN , cS }
determine the volatility of the stock price in the model.
A.1 Proof of Proposition 1
The clearing condition at date t imposes
XtS (pt ) + XtN (pt ) = 1.
Using equations (7) and (8), we deduce that
1
pt = {Et (dt+1 + pt+1 ) + λ(µ, cN , cS )(1 + r − α)ρt − θ(µ, cN , cS )} , (26)
1+r
with
 µ

cN +γ(σ 2 (µ,c 2
N ,cS )+σξ )
λ(µ, cN , cS ) =   (1 + r − α)−1 , (27)
1−µ µ
2
cS +γ(σ 2 (µ,cN ,cS )+σξ )
+ 2
cN +γ(σ 2 (µ,cN ,cS )+σξ )
1
θ(µ, cN , cS ) = 1−µ µ . (28)
2
cS +γ(σ 2 (µ,cN ,cS )+σξ )
+ 2
cN +γ(σ 2 (µ,cN ,cS )+σξ )
It is easily checked that the stationary solution for equation (26) is
d θ(µ, cN , cS ) β(dt − d)
pt = − + + λ(µ, cN , cS )ρt . (29)
r r 1+r−β
Hence, we deduce that the conditional variance of price (V art (pt+1 )) is
29
σ 2 (µ, cN , cS ) = λ(µ, cN , cS )2 σε + β 2 (1 + r − β)−2 σξ .
2 2
(30)
The volatility of the stock price in equilibrium (and λ(µ, cN , cS )) are solutions of the system
of equations (27) and (30). If such a solution exists, it is independent from time since the
system of equations does not depend on time. We now show that the system of equations
(27) and (30) always has at least one solution.
Case 1. For µ = 0, λ(0, cN , cS ) = 0. Hence
σ 2 (0, cN , cS ) = β 2 (1 + r − β)−2 σξ .
2
(31)
µ
Case 2. For µ > 0 and cN = cS = c, λ(µ, cN , cS ) = (1+r−α)
. Hence
σ 2 (µ, c, c) = µ2 (1 + r − α)−2 σε + β 2 (1 + r − β)−2 σξ .
2 2
(32)
Case 3. In other cases (cN = cS and µ > 0), there is no closed form solution to the system
of equations (27) and (30). However, this sytem always has at least one solution. To see
this deﬁne σ 2 = (1 + r − α)−2 σε + β 2 ((1 + r) − β)−2 σξ , σ 2 = β 2 ((1 + r) − β)−2 σξ and
2 2 2
µ
2
cN +γ(x+σξ )
g(x) = 1−µ µ (1 + r − α)−1 ,
2
cS +γ(x+σξ )
+ 2
cN +γ(x+σξ )
2
x − β 2 ((1 + r) − β)−2 σξ
f (x) = for x ≥ σ 2 ,
σ2
F (x) = f (x) − g(x).
It is immediate that the equilibrium level of volatility, σ 2 (µ, cN , cS ), is such that
F (σ 2 (µ, cN , cS )) = 0.
Now we observe that F (σ 2 ) < 0 (if µ > 0) and F (σ 2 ) > 0. As F (.) is continuous, we
deduce that there is at least one value of x ∈ (σ 2 , σ 2 ) such that F (x) = 0. Thus, there
always exists at least one steady state equilibrium. Moreover, if
((1 − µ)cS + µcN )2 > 2µ2 (1 − µ)σ 2 γ(cN − cS ), (33)
then F (.) > 0. Thus, condition (33) is suﬃcient to guarantee the existence of a unique
equilibrium. It is always satisﬁed if cS ≥ cN . For cN large enough compared to cS , multiple
equilibria with diﬀering levels of volatility can exist. Our predictions however are identical
across all equilibria.
30
A.2 Proof of Implication 1
As shown by equation (13), the eﬀect of changing a restraint coeﬃcient on the volatility
of returns is identical to its eﬀect on λ(µ, cN , cS ). We now study this eﬀect.
If cN = cS = c, the value of λ(µ, cN , cS ) is (see the proof of Proposition 1):
µ
λ(µ, c, c) = . (34)
(1 + r − α)
Moreover if µ = 0, λ(0, cN , cS ) = 0. Thus, if cN = cS = c or µ = 0, V ar(Rt+1 ) does not
depend on restraint coeﬃcients (cj ) and the volatility of the stock return is identical in
both markets. This observation yields the ﬁrst part of the proposition.
Now consider the case in which µ > 0 and cC = cC . In this case, in equilibrium, we
N S
have (see the proof of Proposition 1)
µ
2
cC +γ(σ 2 (µ,cC ,cC )+σξ )
λ(µ, cC , cC )
N S =( 1−µ
N N S
µ )(1 + r − α)−1 . (35)
cC +γ(σ 2 (µ,cC ,cC )+σξ )
2 + 2
cC +γ(σ 2 (µ,cC ,cC )+σξ )
S N S N N S
Thus, when cC > cC , we have λ(µ, cC , cC ) < µ(1 + r − α)−1 . Now since cF = cF ,
N S N S N S
λ(µ, cF , cF ) = µ(1 + r − α)−1 (see equation (34)). Thus, λ(µ, cC , cC ) < λ(µ, cF , cF ) if
N S N S N S
C C C C F F C C
cN > cS . A similar argument shows that λ(µ, cN , cS ) > λ(µ, cN , cS ) if cN < cS . Items 1
and 2 in Implication 1 follow.
A.3 Proof of Implication 2
The absolute value of the covariance is linear in λ2 (µ, cN , cS ). Thus, the proof is identical
to the proof of Implication 1.
A.4 Proof of Implication 3
We have shown in the proof of Proposition 1 that
σ 2 (µ, cN , cS ) = λ(µ, cN , cS )2 σε + β 2 (1 + r − β)−2 σξ .
2 2
(36)
Thus, using the proof of Implication 1 and the condition cF = cF , we deduce that
N S
1. σ 2 (µ, cF , cF ) = σ 2 (µ, cC , cC ) if cC = cC or µ = 0.
N S N S N S
2. σ 2 (µ, cF , cF ) > σ 2 (µ, cC , cC ) if cC > cC and µ > 0.
N S N S N S
3. σ 2 (µ, cF , cF ) < σ 2 (µ, cC , cC ) if cC < cC and µ > 0.
N S N S N S
2
def (ck +2γ(σ 2 (µ,ck ,ck )+σξ )
As Υ(µ, ck , ck )) =
N S
S N S
(1−µ)(1+r−α)
, Implication 3 immediately follows if cC = cF .
S S
31
B Tables
Table 1: Summary Statistics
Control Treated
Mean St. Dev. Obs. Mean St. Dev. Obs.
Panel A
Log(Market capitalization) 17.4 1.5 26,030 21.0 1.5 7,549
Daily nber of shares traded/outstanding (%) 0.10 0.09 26,189 0.22 0.12 7,549
S.d. of daily returns 0.029 0.017 22,434 0.025 0.012 7,823
S.d. of daily (return-mkt) 0.028 0.011 22,468 0.023 0.008 7,826
S.d. of daily abn. returns 0.025 0.011 22,468 0.021 0.008 7,826
Daily Amihud ratio (×106 ) 2.6 3.7 26,374 0.1 0.7 8,036
Autocovariance of daily returns (×104 ) -0.49 2.00 20,472 -0.27 1.5 7,686
Bid Ask Spread / Midquote 0.05 0.04 7,701 0.02 0.01 2,895
Panel B
Share of small trades 0.93 0.21 30,170 0.87 0.13 15,010
Share of large trades 0.04 0.16 30,170 0.09 0.11 15,010
Notes: For variable deﬁnitions, see main text. In Panel A, each observation corresponds to a
stock-month, for all months from twenty-four months prior to the reform until twenty-four months
after the reform. In Panel B, each observation corresponds to a stock-day, for all trading days
from August 1, 2000 until October 30, 2000. Sample means and standard deviations are computed
for the sample of stock - months corresponding to treated and control stocks separately.
32
Table 2: The distribution of trades size before and after the reform
(×100) % small transactions % large transactions
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
POST × Treated -1.4∗∗∗ -1.4∗∗∗ -1.3∗∗∗ 1.6∗∗∗ 1.6∗∗∗ 0.9∗∗∗
(0.5) (0.4) (0.5) (0.4) (0.3) (0.4)
POST -0.4 -0.4 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.1
(0.5) (0.3) (0.4) (0.3) (0.2) (0.3)
Treated -4.4∗∗∗ - - 3.8∗∗∗ - -
(0.9) (0.7)
Score ∈ [0.1; 0.9] No No Yes No No Yes
Stock FE No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Observations 45,180 45,180 13,935 45,180 45,180 13,935
Adj. R2 0.02 0.28 0.16 0.02 0.26 0.13
Notes: In columns (1) and (4), this table reports the results for the estimation of
Yit = α + β0 Ti + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit ,
with (i) the daily fraction of small trades as dependent variable (column 1), and (ii) the daily
fraction of large trades as dependent variable (column 4). In columns (2) and (5), we report
estimates of the same equation but we include stock ﬁxed eﬀects, as explained in the text. In
columns (3) and (6), we report estimates of the speciﬁcation with stock ﬁxed eﬀects for the
restricted sample only. In columns (1) and (4), error terms are clustered at the stock level. In
columns (2), (3), (5) and (6) they are clustered at the stock × POST level, due to the presence
of stock ﬁxed eﬀects. Superscripts ∗ , ∗∗ , and ∗∗∗ means statistically diﬀerent from zero at 10%,
5% and 1% levels of signiﬁcance, respectively.
33
Table 3: The eﬀect of the reform on return volatility
(×100) Monthly s.d. (ret-mkt)
(1) (2) (3)
POST × Treated -0.26∗∗∗ -0.18∗∗∗ -0.11∗∗∗
(0.04) (0.03) (0.04)
POST 0.14∗∗∗ 0.04∗∗∗ 0.06∗∗
(0.02) (0.02) (0.03)
Treated -0.37∗∗∗ - -
(0.04)
Stock FE No Yes Yes
Score ∈ [0.1; 0.9] No No Yes
Observations 30,294 30,294 8,229
Adj. R2 0.05 0.38 0.32
Notes: Column (1) of this table reports estimates of
Yit = α + β0 Ti + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit ,
with volatility as a dependent variable. For a given stock, volatility is measured as the monthly
average of the standard deviation of daily returns minus the market return. Column (2) reports
estimates of a similar speciﬁcation with stock ﬁxed eﬀects (see the main text). Column (3) reports
estimates with stock ﬁxed eﬀects for the restricted sample only. In column (1), error terms
are clustered at the stock level. In columns (2) and (3) they are clustered at the stock
× POST level, due to the presence of stock ﬁxed eﬀects. Superscripts ∗ , ∗∗ , and ∗∗∗ means
statistically diﬀerent from zero at 10%, 5% and 1% levels of signiﬁcance.
34
Table 4: The eﬀect of the reform on the autocovariance of stock returns
(×104 ) Autocovariance of Returns
(1) (2) (3)
POST × Treated 0.11∗∗ 0.13∗∗∗ 0.20∗∗∗
(0.05) (0.04) (0.07)
POST -0.25∗∗∗ -0.30∗∗∗ -0.38∗∗∗
(0.03) (0.03) (0.05)
Treated 0.16∗∗∗ - -
(0.05)
Stock FE No Yes Yes
Score ∈ [0.1; 0.9] No No Yes
Observations 28,158 28,158 7,919
Adj. R2 0.01 0.08 0.07
Notes: Column (1) of this table reports estimates of
Yit = α + β0 Ti + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit ,
with the autocovariance of stock returns as a dependent variable. Speciﬁcally, for a given
stock, the dependent variable is the monthly average of the autocovariance of daily returns.
Column (2) reports the estimates of a similar speciﬁcation but with stock ﬁxed eﬀects.
Column (3) reports estimates of the speciﬁcation with stock ﬁxed eﬀects using the restricted
sample only. In column (1), error terms are clustered at the stock level. In column (2)
and (3), they are clustered at the stock × POST level, due to the presence of stock ﬁxed
eﬀects. Superscript ∗ , ∗∗ , and ∗∗∗ means statistically diﬀerent from zero at 10%, 5% and
1% levels of signiﬁcance.
35
Table 5: The eﬀect of the reform on price impact
Amihud ratio
(1) (2) (3)
POST×Treated -0.06 -0.13∗∗ -0.57∗∗∗
(0.05) (0.06) (0.10)
POST 0.15∗∗ 0.23∗∗∗ 0.63∗∗∗
(0.08) (0.05) (0.10)
Treated -2.46∗∗∗ - -
(0.09)
Stock FE No Yes Yes
Score ∈ [0.1; 0.9] No No Yes
Observations 34,410 34,410 8,860
Adj. R2 0.09 0.41 0.31
Notes: Column (1) of this table reports estimates of
Yit = α + β0 Ti + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit ,
with the Amihud ratio as a dependent variable. Speciﬁcally, for a given stock, the depen-
dent variable is the monthly average of the Amihud ratio of the stock (the daily absolute
return divided by the daily trading volume). We multiply this ratio by 106 for the estima-
tion. Column (2) reports the estimates of a similar speciﬁcation with stock ﬁxed eﬀects.
Column (3) reports estimates of the speciﬁcation with stock ﬁxed eﬀects for the restricted
sample only. In column (1), error terms are clustered at the stock level. In columns (2)
and (3), they are clustered at the stock × POST level, due to the presence of stock ﬁxed
eﬀects. Superscripts ∗ , ∗∗ , and ∗∗∗ means statistically diﬀerent from zero at 10%, 5% and
1% levels of signiﬁcance.
36
Table 6: Changing the sample periods
-12;+12 months -18;+18 months
Volat Amihud Ratio Autocov Volat Amihud Ratio Autocov
POST × Treated -0.06 -0.58∗∗∗ 0.04 -0.10∗∗∗ -0.55∗∗∗ 0.15∗∗
(0.04) (0.09) (0.08) (0.04) (0.10) (0.07)
POST 0.01 0.62∗∗∗ -0.16∗∗∗ 0.11∗∗∗ 0.61∗∗∗ -0.29∗∗∗
(0.03) (0.09) (0.06) (0.03) (0.10) (0.06)
Stock FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Score ∈ [0.1; 0.9] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 4,261 4,260 4,077 6,285 6,781 6,052
Adj. R2 0.41 0.36 0.11 0.37 0.34 0.08
Notes: In this table we estimate equation
Yit = αi + β1 P OSTt + β2 Ti × P OSTt + εit ,
using diﬀerent sample periods. In all cases we use only the restricted sample of stocks. The ﬁrst
three columns consider the case in which the sample period is equal to twenty-four month (twelve
before the reform and thewelve after). The last three columns report the estimates when the
sample period is equal to thirty six months (eighteen before the reform and eighteen after). In
columns (1) and (4), the dependent variable is the monthly average of the standard deviation of
the daily stock return minus the market return. In columns (2) and (5), the dependent variable
is the monthly average of the daily Amihud ratio (multiplied by 106 ). In columns (3) and (6),
the dependent variable is the monthly average of the autocovariance of daily returns. In all
regressions, error terms are clustered at the stock × POST level. Superscripts ∗ , ∗∗ , and ∗∗∗
means statistically diﬀerent from zero at 10%, 5% and 1% level of signiﬁcance.
37
C Figures
800
.3
600
.2
400
.1
200
0
0
10 15 20 25 0 .002 .004 .006
Log(Initial Stockmarket Capitalization) Initial % of Shares Traded Monthly
Control Treatment Control Treatment
Figure 1: Distribution of Market Capitalization and Turnover
This ﬁgure gives the distribution of the log of market capitalization and the turnover (average
number of shares traded divided by number of outstanding shares) for treated stocks (black bars)
and control stocks (grey bars) in September 2000.
38
800
.6
600
.4
400
.2
200
0
0
17 18 19 20 21 22 0 .002 .004 .006
Log(Initial Stockmarket Capitalization) Initial % of Shares Traded Monthly
Control Treatment Control Treatment
Figure 2: Distribution of Market Capitalization and Turnover: restricted sam-
ple
This ﬁgure gives the distribution of the log of market capitalization and the turnover (average
number of shares traded divided by number of outstanding shares), as of September 2000, for
treated stocks (black bars) and control stocks (grey bars) in the restricted sample.
39
Treated group Control group
Shares initially traded forward Shares initially traded spot
.68 .7 .72 .74 .76
.65 .7 .75 .8 .85
Share of small trades
Share of small trades
Aug00 Sep00 Oct00 Nov00 Dec00 Aug00 Sep00 Oct00 Nov00 Dec00
Treated group Control group
Shares initially traded forward Shares initially traded spot
.01 .02 .03 .04 .05 .06
.05 .06 .07 .08 .09 .1
Share of large trades
Share of large trades
Aug00 Sep00 Oct00 Nov00 Dec00 Aug00 Sep00 Oct00 Nov00 Dec00
Figure 3: The fraction of small and large trades
This ﬁgure gives the evolution of the cross-sectional averages of the fractions of small trades
(upper panel) and large trades (lower panel) from August 1, 2000 to December 31, 2000 for the
sample of treated stocks and the sample of control stocks.
40
-.018
-.02
-.022
-.024
-.026
-.028
-10 -5 0 5 10
Months Since Forward Market Suppression
Bid Ask Spread: Treated - Control 4 Months Moving Average
Figure 4: Bid-Ask Spread Around the reform
This ﬁgure represents the evolution of (i) the monthly diﬀerence between the average bid-ask
spread of treated stocks and the average bid-ask spread of control stocks, from ten months before
the reform to ten months after the reform (plain line) and (ii) a four months moving average of
this diﬀerence (dashed line).
41
100
99
98
97
-20 -10 0 10 20
Months Since Forward Market Suppression
Treated Stocks Control Stocks
Figure 5: Market capitalizations around the reform
This ﬁgure represents the evolution of the average market capitalization of treated stocks (red
line) and control stocks (blue line) from twenty months before the reform to twenty months after
the reform. Prices of all stocks have been normalized to 100 September 2000.
42
1500
1000
500
0
-.002 -.001 0 .001
Figure 6: Placebos for volatility
This ﬁgure gives the distribution of β2 when equation (22) is estimated using each month from
January 1996 to December 1997 as a placebo experiment and using volatility as the dependent
variable.
43